Too Many Reasons
is the new album from ‘70s soft-rock sensation Player, known best for their
smash hit “Baby Come Back.” Featuring original members Ronn Moss and Peter
Beckett, Player has been chomping at the bit to put this record out.

And the time is finally here.

“It was supposed to come out in November,” explains Beckett.
“I had it finished. I handed the finished thing in, in July of last year, and
it was supposed to come out in November. And as with everything, it’s hurry up
and wait; it didn’t come out because they held it back because of the Christmas
rush. And they said we’ll have a much better chance if we put it out after
Christmas. So, I think it was the right move.”

Now that is has, being released in North America on Feb. 26
via Frontiers Records, Beckett and Moss are more than eager to discuss it. They
went through some of its tracks in a recent interview:

Why did you want to
do an acoustic version of “Baby Come Back” for this record?

Peter Beckett:
That song had been … that’s one of the songs that I went in and did a while
ago. And I actually did it as a demo, an acoustic demo, with a little bit of
electric guitar and stuff on there, and Frontiers wanted a bonus track. And
they said, “Just do something acoustically.” So I said, “I’ve got this version
of ‘Baby Come Back’ that is semi-acoustic, and it’s been sitting here a few
years. You can use that.” And they heard it and they loved it, so they put it
on there. In fact, I think they actually said, “We like it so much we want
another bonus track (laughs) and we’re going to make it part of the album.” So
we had to find yet another bonus track. So that’s the story of the acoustic
“Baby Come Back.”

Tell us about how
some of the songs on this record came about, starting with “Man on Fire.”

PB: Okay. Well,
truthfully, that was one of the latest songs. When we had most of the songs
accepted by the record label, they said, “We want you to do a couple of
rockers.” Our guitarist, Rob Math, who’s … well, he’s younger than us. He’s
kind of a serious heavy-metal guitarist, actually. He’s quite amazing. And he
had this track, which he brought to me at my studio at home, and he had a
handful of songs. I said, “That track I consider a good hard rock track.” And
myself and Steve Plunkett [of the ‘80s metal band Autograph], we edited it,
changed parts, wrote the lyrics, wrote the melodies and sent it to Frontiers,
and they said, “Perfect. Now we need another one (laughs).” I went in and did
one by myself, but Ronn hadn’t heard that song until it was finished, and we
were actually rehearsing in Ronn’s garage at the house with the band, and we
just started playing it, didn’t we Ronn? And it was like instantly Ronnie loved
it, and the band loved it.

“The Sins of Yesterday” and “My Addiction” –
are they related somehow?

PB: Related to
each other? No. They’re all coming from life stories, you know. They’re all
little stories on their own, positive or negative, because everything comes
from more truth. Some are … Ronnie can explain “My Addiction” if he wants.

Ronn Moss: “My
Addiction” is from when I saw my wife … That’s my tribute to her. I dedicate
that to her.

PB: And “The Sins
of Yesterday,” I think speaks for itself. It’s a really weird thing explaining
your songs to people, unless you’ve written about something political and then
you can say whatever you want, but when you’re writing songs about your life,
you’ve really got to leave it up to the listener to pick up on what you
intended.

“Life in Color” and
“Nothin’ Like You”

PB: “Nothin’ Like
You” again is one of the older songs that I wrote with Steve Plunkett. Steve
Plunkett was from the band Autograph. He was in a heavy-metal hair band, and he
had a bunch of hits on his own. We’ve written together for a long time, but
“Nothin’ Like You” … I don’t even remember what it was written about, ‘cause it
was a while ago. “Life in Color” is a brand new song, and basically, particularly
as you can hear in the words, I went through a big divorce – so did Ronn a
while back, before me – and you live with that for years after and there’s
something that’s always eating at you about it, you know. And my life changed
about two years ago. I met somebody who changed my life for the better and made
me positive again, and she just said, “You only live once. You can’t be
miserable. You’ve got to live your life in color.” And that’s where that came
from. It just puts a positive message out there.

Lyrically, do you
have a different perspective on things – I suppose you can’t help but have a
different perspective on things the older you get – but does that come through
in your lyrics?

PB: Yeah, you
know, somebody just said in an interview the other day – and it was a written
interview, somebody from Germany – and he said, “What do you think Player has
to offer?” or “Does Player have anything to offer these days?” And I said,
“What we have to offer now is experience.” We’ve lived. We’re older now. We’ve
got a lot of experience and that’s going to come through, probably more so than
30 years ago.

Ronn, do these songs
kind of capture how you’re feeling?

PB: We’ve known
each other a long time. You know, we’ve known each other since the beginning of
Player, and pretty much, even when we weren’t in contact a whole lot, we were
still in contact for the past 20 years or so. We’ve been constantly in contact,
and we’ve done a lot of stuff together and we’ve worked on a lot of stuff
together. One of the songs Ronn does on this album is a song called “Kites.”

RM: “Kites” is
really sort of an ethereal-flavored song that came from one of my solo albums,
and it came from a song in the ‘60s done by Simon Dupree, who had a No. 1
record with it in England when I was a kid. Well, interestingly enough, when we
signed … when we met the guys from Frontiers Records, based in Italy, who were
going to distribute our records, we started talking about this band …

PB: Simon Dupree
and the Big Sound.

RM: Anyway, we
did this song called “Kites” by this guy Simon Dupree, and this guy raised his
hand, and we go, “Are you Simon Dupree?” And he goes, “Yeah.” (laughs)

PB: We’re sitting
there with three of the executives from the label, and we said, “We’d like to
put this song on there. It’s a beautifully produced song, you know, and Ronn
does a great job on it and it’s called ‘Kites.’ It was a hit in England by this
guy, Simon Dupree and the Big Sound,” and he puts his hand up like this, and we
go, “No.” And he says, “Yep, that was me.” And he’s going to be our executive.

RM: Talking about
my relationship to all the lyrics, Pete has always written very wonderfully
crafted lyrics around amazing, memorable songs. He never writes to make a
couple of hits on the album … so we had a lot of material to work from. I
identified with pretty much all of it, as well. It’s become part of our thing.
And so I live through it, just like everybody, but we’re always starting new. This
band has always started new; everything’s fresh from the start, like erasing
everything on a chalkboard, like a kid, starting over. It’s always cool to
start over. And that’s what this has been. It’s been a rebirth for all of us.

You guys are planning
on touring?

PB: Yep, they’re
talking. They’re trying to get us to Europe, because our record label is based
out of Europe. We have a shed tour that our manager is trying to put together
in the summer with several other ‘70s artists … Bobby Kimball, Toto. I don’t
know who’s actually going to end up on the final bill … Christopher Cross, and
people like us, and the Little River Band … I’m not sure. People like us from
the late ‘70s and so far, we’re looking at about a month, between May and
August. Not sure if it’ll be a month in succession, but it’s about a month’s
worth of gigs and that’ll continue if it goes well in America.

Peel off the layers of the onion known as Player, and it
quickly becomes apparent that there was more – much more – to these ‘70s hit-makers
than the ubiquitous soft-rock chart-topper “Baby Come Back.”

Right off, there’s the fact that Ronn Moss is a huge
international soap opera star, having portrayed fashion mogul Ridge Forrester
on “The Bold and the Beautiful” for an astounding 25 years, before recently
calling it quits.

Moss’s partner in Player, Peter Beckett, may have an even
more interesting background. Not only did he see The Beatles play at the Cavern
Club and perform with the Little River Band from 1989 to 1997, but he also was
an integral member of Paladin, one of the U.K.’s most intriguing and
experimental early 1970s progressive-rock outfits.

When Paladin, which Beckett called “a fusion-rock, quasi-jazz
thing” formed by ex-Terry Reid band members Keith Webb and Peter Solley, split up, Beckett headed for America – or more specifically, California
– at the behest of friend Steve Kipner.

Thinking back to Paladin, Beckett recalls, “We did that
whole thing where we went out and lived in a castle in Gloucestershire in the
countryside for six months, and then did an album and we came back to London,
and we did the whole university circuit. We did two albums. It was a pretty
well-known band in England, and then it split up. And truthfully, I can’t
remember why it split up. It was just a couple of guys left, and we replaced
them, and it was never as good and the band split up.”

Looking around for work in L.A. after Paladin dissolved,
Beckett auditioned for record labels and management companies, before winding up in something rather ridiculous called Skyband.

“It was atrocious,” says Beckett. “I mean, I’m sure they had
their reasons, but they made us all dye our hair white, and they took pictures
of us with no shirts on with these big helmets with feathers in … and it was
Skyband and we were supposed to be like warriors from the sky – very
embarrassing album cover.”

Nothing they did was well-received.

“We put out one album, and it did nothing,” remembers
Beckett. “We did one tour of England, believe it or not, with the [Sensational]
Alex Harvey Band. We were horrible, and we came back and split up [in 1975],
and I was like floating for a year.”

Whatever sins Beckett committed beforehand in his life,
Beckett’s penance with Skyband more than made up for them, and soon, he was
rewarded with a 1977 meeting in Los Angeles with future band mates Moss and Texan
J.C. Crowley that would lead to the formation of Player.

As Moss recalls, “We met at J.C. Crowley’s little
cockroach-infested apartment. Peter and J.C. were there already and our soon to
become manager Paul Palmer had said to me, ‘I’ve got a couple guys that I think
you should meet, and I think the three of you will work really well.’ So he
arranged it, we exchanged demos that day, we played … the place was so small
that we had to go outside to meet each other, because there wasn’t room for all
three of us. But we wound up using his garage to finish writing all the songs
for the first Player album. And it worked out really well. I really liked the
guys, and we had a camaraderie that worked well.”

Player - Too Many Reasons 2013

That friendship between Moss and Beckett that began in that
tiny hole-in-the-wall has survived for decades, and they have made a lot of music
together, even though it’s been almost 20 years since the last official Player
record. In 2013, however, Player has resurfaced, with its newest album Too Many Reasons, and it feels to them
like the late ‘70s all over again, when Player’s varied musical tastes helped
propel them up the charts.

“Player’s always been a very eclectic band,” says Beckett.
“I’m always worried about the songs fitting together, which is kind of stupid
because The Beatles were like that anyway. You know, they always had hard rock
and soft ones, and so even in the old days, we’d have a song like ‘Baby Come
Back’ on the same album as a song like ‘Silver Linings,’ which was a total hard
rock song. And then we’d stick some pop in there, and it was always very
eclectic, and this album has turned out to be exactly that. As Ronn will tell
you, I was really worried that the songs didn’t go together, but when we put
them all together and mastered it, it sounded exactly like one of the old
Player albums. It’s got a bit of everything in it.”

Moss adds, “I feel like these songs now, even though some of
them are pulled from older songs, we’ve given them a new flavor. They are not
sounding like old songs. They sound new.” And that includes the title track,
which Beckett claims is “… from a while ago, and we fixed it up. That could be
anybody. It sounds to me like it could be a Whitesnake record.”

‘Silver Linings’ Playbook

Unlike Beckett, Moss grew up in L.A., the son of the owner
of Mutual Ticket Agency, a predecessor to Ticketmaster. Concerts, theater and
music – Moss became immersed in the entertainment industry from a young age,
and he played multiple instruments, including drums, guitar and bass.

Moss found his kindred spirits in Beckett and Crowley, who
had been in a band together called Riff Raff, which changed its name to
Bandana. That band had been on Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter’s label Haven,
but Haven folded. There was a silver lining, however. The two record company
moguls eventually moved on over to RSO Records, the Robert Stigwood label that
would go on to sign Player, but not before Beckett, Crowley, Moss and the
drummer Moss brought to Player, John Friesen, went to great lengths to get a
deal.

“We got turned down by almost every record label in America,
until we found the RSO label through Dennis Lambert,” remembers Beckett.

Player’s search for a label involved performing live in front of producers, because as Moss
puts it, “We’d always wanted to play live in those showcases. We never wanted
to play tapes of us playing. We wanted to make sure they saw us and heard us
playing live.”

Before each one, Beckett says Player would rehearse for a week.

“I think we did two or three, the final one being when we
had ‘Baby Come Back,’ and that’s when we were starting to get pretty good,” says Beckett. “There was one we did … I think we did about five songs, and we did ‘Baby Come
Back’ at the end, and got all of it done. I seem to remember being very cocky
in those days and all that, but I went on the mic and on that last song –
nobody had ever heard ‘Baby Come Back’ yet – and there’s all these record
executives, and I said, ‘Now, we’d like to do our No. 1 record.’ And this was
like six months before it even came out, and we did it and it kicked ass. And
everybody’s mouth was open like, ‘Oh my God. That sounds like a hit.’ And then
we went and recorded it, and you know the rest.”

Player's self-titled debut album

Well, that’s not quite all there is to the story. With their
self-titled first record out, Player brought their brand of breezy,
laid-back pop-rock out on the road, initially touring with Gino Vannelli in
November 1977.

“The very first gig we did – and we’d been rehearsing for a
while, but we hadn’t been playing gigs – and we got this gig at the Buffalo
Town Hall and we were supporting Gino Vannelli, who is, you know, amazing,”
says Beckett. “And we all, with our little guitar cases, just kind of walked in
behind the stage and he was doing his sound check, and it was just monstrous.
It was just so good, just as synthesizers were coming in and his whole thing
was synthesizers, and it was just huge. And we were sitting in the wings going,
‘Oh my God, we’ll never be anything like that (laughs).’”

While out with Vannelli, “Baby Come Back” was climbing the
charts by leaps and bounds.

“We were in … a real dirty little rehearsal place, and the
manager comes running and he said, ‘You guys are No. 80 on Billboard,’” says
Beckett. “And we just went crazy,” much as they did when they first heard the
song on the radio.

“I remember the first time we heard it on the radio,” says
Moss. “J.C., Peter and I were actually driving up La Brea Avenue in my car and
it came on the radio – it was one of those freak things that just happen in
life. And we just started screaming in the car. It was a great moment.”

There would be many more highlights. With their hit single
on the rise, going all the way to No. 1, where it spent three weeks in the top
spot, Player was shifted from the Vannelli tour to the Boz Scaggs bill. “We
were plucked and put on [Scaggs’s] ‘Silk Degrees’ tour,” says Beckett. “And we
went from just medium-sized gigs to doing huge arenas, and [‘Baby Come Back’]
hit No. 1.”

The Scaggs gig was a high-profile one for Player, but in
short order, they’d be called up to the big leagues as the support act for
guitar god Eric Clapton on his “Slowhand” tour.

“Well, you know, the Boz Scaggs tour wasn’t chopped liver,
either,” says Beckett. “But we’d already done about two months of 30,000-seat
arenas, and then we went back and did the Danger
Zone album. We knew we were going on the ‘Slowhand’ tour, so we made the Danger Zone album harder edged so that
we were able to go out and support Eric Clapton and have the right kind of
music under our belts.”

As it turned out, they were a little too good for Clapton’s
entourage.

“We had a wonderful little thing happen to us at the Aladdin
Theatre in Las Vegas,” says Moss. “Player had the No. 1 record, and in the
middle of ‘Baby Come Back’ there’s a silence, before the last chorus starts.
Well, right at that downbeat to that chorus, after the silence, we all came in
… and, no power. The power had gone out. There was nothing but drums.”

Beckett chimed in, “The sound had gone out,” before Moss
added, “The lights didn’t go out – just the power to our amplifiers. So we all
looked around, and they finally got it up and rolling.”

Evidently, as Player would later find out, one of Clapton’s
roadies pulled the plug on Player’s performance. “It took several days for
somebody backstage to finally fess up,” says Moss. “And it turned out to be
Eric Clapton’s crew who fessed up and said, ‘Yeah, we pulled the plug on you
guys.’ We were going down to well, and initially, we were really pissed. ‘Why
would you do that?’ and the guy said, ‘It’s because you were going over a
little too well.’”

Beckett says Clapton knew nothing about the incident, but
after the roadie admitted what he’d done, Clapton tried to make peace. “They
fessed up. They fessed up. And [Clapton] came in the dressing room a couple of
weeks later with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and he never really admitted
anything, but he said, ‘Are you guys okay?’” says Beckett.

Comeback

The original Player lineup started to break apart after the Danger Zone LP, as Crowley departed for
a solo career in country music. There were arena tours with Heart and Kenny
Loggins, a handful of hit singles such as “This Time I’m in it for Love” –
which went to No. 11 on the Billboard chart – and 1980 saw Player release Room with a View, but Moss and Friesen
left soon after.

“My own decision came from the fact that our record company
seemed to be falling out from under us,” explains Moss. “RSO Records had
reached the pinnacle and then disbanded. And then we went to Casablanca, after
Neil Bogart had died. And we weren’t recording enough. We were basically
sitting around, getting frustrated and I decided to do acting and give it a
try. So I went from having something in music to basically having absolutely
nothing in the acting world. And I took a couple of years’ hiatus from being with
Peter and Player and doing music, and they continued on, with another album
from Player. He never stopped doing music, and I took a short break, and
eventually we hooked back up and it’s been a nice ride – still is a nice ride.”

Player - Lost in Reality 1996

Beckett kept Player going, recording one more album with Spies of Life in the early ‘80s before
shelving the Player name, until Moss and Beckett – the sole remaining original
members – made 1996’s Lost in Reality. Over
the years, Beckett has been a prolific behind-the-scenes songwriter, penning
material for such artists as Heart (one of his favorites), Kenny Rogers, The
Temptations, Poco, Janet Jackson, Survivor, and Olivia Newton-John, who scored
a Top Five hit with one of Beckett’s compositions.

“I love Heart. I had a song on Bad Animals,” says Beckett. “Kenny Rogers, I had a beautiful song
that Ronn actually did as well, called ‘All This Time.’ It’s a song that’s one
of my favorites of what I’ve done. Kenny Rogers did it and then Ronn put it on
one of his solo albums. With Olivia Newton-John, she had a song at No. 5 on
Billboard called “Twist of Fate,” which we do onstage today with our band. It’s
a lot harder than Olivia did it.”

Writing music for the movies has also kept Beckett busy.
“I’ve written rap songs for movies. I’ve written ballads. I’ve written heavy
metal. I had two things in ‘Rock Star,’ the Mark Wahlberg movie. I had the main
song, ‘Living the Life.’ And that’s serious metal,” says Beckett.

But, it’s his partnership with Moss that has endured, and
soon Player and its music will make it into a feature film being directed by
none other than Moss himself.

“Combining Player’s music with the visual, that’s something
we’ve been heading toward for a long time,” says Moss, who regrets that Player
missed out on the MTV explosion. “When we did our videos, everything was very
simple – standing up on a soundstage and filming the band actually playing the
song. We didn’t have all that great imagery you have now.”

With their latest album, out Feb. 26 on the FrontiersRecords label, Player now has plenty of songs for Moss’s directorial debut as a
filmmaker. Player will have more to say about their new album in a blog slated for that release date.

Sobriety seems to suit Glenn Hughes rather nicely. A nasty drug
habit nearly cost him his life, as well as his career, by 1990. Off of nearly everyone’s radar, Hughes was in danger of both burning out and fading away.

Miraculously,
despite all efforts at self-destruction, the former Trapeze, Black Sabbath
(yes, he was working with Tony Iommi on his solo album, but Seventh Star ended up a legit Sabbath
release) and Deep Purple Mark III and IV bassist/singer – dubbed the “voice of
rock” by, all of people, the techno-house outfit The KLF, who employed Hughes
on their 1991 single “America – What Time is Love?” – got clean and started
working his magic again, putting out an eclectic series of solo albums and
interesting experimental collaborations that, once more, brought out the
funk-soul brother in Hughes.

Live in Wolverhampton,
recorded over two nights in 2009 in Hughes’s hometown of Bilston, is sort of a Glenn
Hughes starter kit for the uninitiated. Joyous and life-affirming, with an
intimacy most concert recordings never quite manage to capture, this double-disc
set showcases the vocal gymnastics and vitality of Hughes and the impressive
chops of a band that twists and turns this material sideways and inside-out, breathing
new life into it. When they get cooking on extended jams, Hughes, drummer Steve
Stevens – not the guy from Billy Idol’s band – and guitarist Jeff Kollman
threaten to boil over on sweltering hard funk and vibrant R&B workouts like
the old Trapeze favorites “You Are the Music,” a cosmic “Your Love is Alright” and “Way
Back to the Bone” from Disc 2, themed “You Are the Music: An Evening of
Trapeze.”

And what a night it is for this particular performance,
reminding us all just how criminally underrated Trapeze is, the funk-rock
pioneers blazing trails few dared follow. Culling selections from both 1970’s Medusa and 1972’s You Are the Music … We are the Band, this set finds Hughes and pals
giving “Coast to Coast,” “Seafull” and the warm, charming little ditty “Good
Love” a soulful rendering, with some sophisticated jazz-fusion passages – as
well as a stormy, yet melodic, take on “Jury” – thrown in for good measure.

All the colors of Hughes’s rainbow are display on Disc 1,
where the rugged hard-rock stomp and thick grooves of both Hughes/Thrall’s
“Muscle & Blood” – off their self-titled 1982 album – and “Crave,” from
Hughes’s solo LP First Underground
Nuclear Kitchen, move with purpose and bad intentions, with just a touch of
psychedelic soul making the choruses bloom, as they also do in the sunny, kaleidoscopic
R&B feasts “Love Communion” and “Don’t Let Me Bleed.” Stevie Wonder, who
once called Hughes his favorite white singer, would be duly impressed, although
he might blanch at their lengthy and unnecessarily bloated 20:36 reading of Deep
Purple’s “Mistreated.”

Originally recorded by Purple for the seminal 1974 album Burn, Hughes’s first appearance on
record with the band after he’d replaced departed bass player Roger Glover and
David Coverdale had stepped in for Ian Gillan, “Mistreated” opens with an
imaginative and beguiling Kollman guitar solo that’s gentle and delicate in
parts and fluid and fiery in others. Still, this take is somewhat turgid and missing
the smoldering bluesy character of the original, with some of Hughes’s vocal
histrionics going a bit too far at the finish. Despite this misstep, Hughes’s confident
phrasing throughout Live at Wolverhampton
is sublime, those remarkable pipes of his sounding just as clear as they
did 40 years ago.

When he screams, “I’m a man,” at the end of “Muscle &
Blood,” you don’t doubt it for a second, and he chooses his partners well –
Stevens’ amazing stick work in “You’ve Got Soul” is intricate and propulsive,
and both he and Kollman, who sounds like a hundred of the greatest guitar
players of all-time all rolled into one, seem perfectly in sync with whatever’s
going on in Hughes’s head. The party for Hughes may no longer involve
mind-altering substances, but if Live at
Wolverhampton is any indication, it’s raging hotter than ever for a man who’s
found serenity and happiness.

Like a general marshaling his troops for another saber-rattling, bloody charge into battle, Saxon’s Biff Byford had an inspirational message for the band on the eve of preparing to go to work on Sacrifice.

Saxon - Sacrifice 2013

Due out now in late March, the 26th to be exact, in the U.S., having been delayed
because of manufacturing problems, Sacrifice
is rough-and-tumble, old-school New Wave of British Heavy Metal mixed with fire-bombing
thrash, influenced by the same bands, including Metallica, that once worshiped
at Saxon’s altar.

As Byford says in the press materials related to Sacrifice, “My brief to the band was not
to be afraid, to be raw, be real and not be afraid to look back at the old
classic material for inspiration.”

Between 1980 and 1983, Saxon toured relentlessly and churned
out album after album of rugged, hard-working metal machinery that celebrated the
blue-collar lifestyle, the commitment to spreading the gospel of metal and the
pure enjoyment of engines and driving heavy-duty motorcycles. Studio albums
such as Wheels of Steel, Strong Arm of the Law, Denim and Leather and Power & the Glory are considered stone-cold
NWOBHM classics, and Sacrifice – coming
hot on the heels of such critically acclaimed works as 2009’s Into the Labyrinth and 2011’s Call to Arms – is a throwback to the
good old days of Saxon.

“Yeah, I think we’re in that sort of period again that we
used to be in, in the ‘80s,” says Byford, in a recent interview with Backstage
Auctions. “We’re knocking them out really good. So, yeah, we feel pretty good
about this album. I produced it myself. I was more in control of, you know, the
actual songs and the sounds, so I’m quite happy about that.”

The decision to captain the ship this time around came from
a desire to make a classic Saxon album, especially in light of the fact that Sacrifice is the band’s 20th
album.

“I just really wanted to make an album that I liked and not
be beholden to the people who are not doing it,” explains Byford. “The fans are
quite happy with that, so that was good. Yeah, I just wanted to reflect them on
this album. There are no ballads, just good rock music, just good metal music.
That’s what I wanted to do.”

For homework, the boys in Saxon – Byford, guitarists Paul
Quinn and Doug Scarratt, drummer Nigel Glockler, and bassist Nibbs Carter –
were assigned the task of sitting with those landmark recordings and trying to
channel the spirit and attitude of Saxon’s glorious past.

“I mean, we went back to the ‘80s a little bit for two or
three of the songs, just to figure out what made us great,” says Byford. “I
think ‘Warriors of the Road’ and ‘Stand Up and Fight’ are sort of thrash-metal-y
like the ‘80s were, and yeah, I just wanted to play with Marshalls and Gibsons
really, and just play and not rely too much on too many digital tricks and just
play like it is really.”

Forget Pro-Tools and all that foolishness. Sacrifice was made in England, the
old-fashioned way. And though it certainly contains elements of classic Saxon, Sacrifice did allow the band to stretch
out creatively.

“Some of the stuff is quite modern, like ‘Made in Belfast’
is a really heavy song, with the Celtic sort of style (mandolins being part of
the equation),” says Byford. “We were experimenting as well, but yeah, I wanted
the songs to have that kind of push like it was recorded yesterday, but still
have that one foot in the past.”

Sacrifice was originally slated for release Feb. 26 in
America. It’ll come out in a variety of packages, including a standard jewel-case
CD, a limited-edition deluxe digibook, a vinyl picture disc, a direct-to-consumer
fan package (available exclusively for online order from online retailers), and
a digital download that includes one bonus song, “Luck of the Draw.” It’s an
iTunes exclusive. A complete version of our interview with Biff will be available as the release date for Sacrifice approaches.

Versatility is one of the veteran singer’s calling cards.
His tireless work ethic is another. Seemingly always juggling a multitude of
projects at one time, Soto’s ability to multitask and sing with power and dynamic
range has made him one of the most sought-after lead throats in hard rock.

It all started for Soto in the early 1980s, when guitar
virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen tabbed him to sing on his 1984 debut solo album Rising Force. Soto stuck it out with
Malmsteen for one more album, 1985’s Marching
Out, but he bristled under Malmsteen’s dictatorial leadership and left to
pursue other projects.

One was Talisman, the Swedish melodic hard-rock outfit he
fronted from 1990 to 2007. Allowed to moonlight whenever he pleased, Soto –
influenced heavily by Queen’s Freddie Mercury and Journey’s Steve Perry, as
well as soul singers like Sam Cooke – also lent his talents to a wide variety of
musical endeavors, including the movie “Rock Star,” which found him joining
forces with guitarist Zakk Wylde (Ozzy Osbourne, Black Label Society), Jason Bonham and
bassist Jeff Pilson (Dokken), as well as Steelheart’s Michael Matijevic, in the
fictional band Steel Dragon.

Along the way, Soto has sung with the likes of Axel Rudi
Pell, Panther, Takara, Eyes and Soul Sirkus, among other bands. In the U.S., he’s
probably best known for stepping in for Steve Augeri in Journey on their
2006-2007 tours and singing with the heavy-metal theatrical caravan
Trans-Siberian Orchestra in recent years. However, he’s also provided background
vocals for such metal and rock luminaries as Lita Ford, Stryper, Glass Tiger, Saigon
Kick and the aforementioned Steelheart.

W.E.T. - Rise Up 2013

For years, though, Soto has also been friends with Queen’s
Brian May and Roger Taylor, and in the summer of 2012, he toured with Queen Extravaganza,
the official Queen tribute band that Taylor produced.

As if that weren’t enough, Soto released his solo album Damage Control in the spring of 2012,
and in 2013, he plans to tour in support of it. But, there’s the not-so-little
matter of his involvement in the super group W.E.T., which releases its
sophomore LP, Rise Up, on Feb. 26,
via Frontiers Records. Soto is responsible for the “T” portion of W.E.T.,
having been in Talisman. The other two letters refer to the bands of Erik Martensson,
from Swedish pop-metal act Eclipse, and Robert Sall, keyboardist/guitarist for the
Swedish melodic rock outfit Work of Art.

Surprisingly heavy, but still infused with big hooks and
generous melodies, Rise Up, the
successor to W.E.T.’s unexpectedly successful self-titled first album, is chock full of great songs and thick, crunchy riffs. And it
is a complete band effort, whereas the first album saw Soto singing to tracks
sent to him by Sall and Martensson. Rounding out W.E.T., a project devised byFrontiers Records President/Founder Serafino Perugino, are guitarist Magnus
Henriksson and drummer Robban Back. They’ll be touring in 2013 as well. Soto discussed
W.E.T. and his fascinating career in this recent interview.

I’ve been listening
to the new W.E.T. album. It’s very good.

Jeff Scott Soto:
We’ve been sitting on this for almost a year because we started working on it
earlier in the year, but because we’re all in different bands and all so busy,
it was kind of hit and miss as to when we could get together and do it. And
then we finally finished it, and then we realized, you know what, it’s not
strong enough. Let’s get a couple of other songs on there, and then let’s
decide what’s going to make it on. It was really just a total work in progress
for almost a year. So, we’re excited to finally get it done and get it out
there, and now we’re getting the excitement level building for it.

The songs are great
and the production is really spectacular. Did you want to up the ante from the
first one or do you feel that this is not necessarily another step in the
progression of W.E.T. but a fuller realization of what you want to do with the
band?

JSS: Well, it’s
kind of all of the above. The first album was more of a session for me. It was
more an idea that I did for the record label. It was just a concept – let’s see
if this works. And the fact that it worked and then some … I mean, this thing
outsold all of our collective bands individually by more than double. So
overall, it was something we didn’t expect, but also with that now thrown into
the equation, we realized if we’re going to do a follow-up, let’s do it as a
band. Let’s follow up and turn this into something that is real, not just
something that was kind of an accident that kind of happened in the studio. And
ironically, and I’ve said this a couple of times already, this whole thing came
about almost in the same way Talisman came about – and Talisman was my band for
19 years, up to 2009, when my bass player [Marcel Jacob] took his own life – it
was kind of an experiment that turned into longevity for part of my career. So
that’s kind of how we’re treating this thing. It started as, “Let’s get these
guys together who kind of barely know each other and see what can resolve of
it.” And now it’s kind of turned into a real thing. So, yeah, we knew we had to
up the ante. We knew we had to make the album sound as good as we possibly
could. We knew the songs had to be strong. It wasn’t just something that we
threw together and said, “Well, okay. Let’s do it as we did before.” We had to
put a little more effort behind it if we were going to have people take it
seriously.

From listening to it,
it had to be difficult to choose a first single, because every song is
radio-friendly. Why did you choose “Learn to Live Again”?

JSS: That’s
pretty much out of our hands. That’s when the label comes into play. They
helped us decide which songs could be on the final product, but also, they have
the final say on what’s going to be the first single that gets out there. As
far as we’re concerned, we have no problem with that, because as you said,
there are so many strong songs on there. They could have chosen any one of them
to be the first single, and we would have said, “Yes,” because we feel that
strongly about a lot of the material there.

Is that one of your
favorite songs on the record, or is there another you feel better about?

JSS: You know
what? Strangely enough, and on this album, I’m a little closer to the heavier
stuff and the ballad stuff, because the AOR, middle-of-the-road rock stuff, the
melodic rock stuff, that’s stuff that the first album was built on. We had more
of that middle-of-the-road, melodic thing going on there, and so we knew to
have that kind of stuff on here would be important, but I don’t think the
heavier songs and the ballads were as strong on the first album as they are on
the new album. That’s one of the reasons I’m so close to the ballads, and
there’s actually an unreleased song on there that I hope at some point gets out
there – whether it’s going to be on a compilation, whether it’s going to be on
a single – but there’s a song called “Bigger Than Both of Us” that didn’t make
it on the final album that’s a ballad and it’s one of my favorites that we did.
And for it to be just a bonus track or something that’s going to be floating
around, it’s kind of strange that we’re sitting on such a strong song. So it’s
weird to actually try to choose one that’s your favorite. It’s kind of like
saying, “Which one of your kids is your favorite kid.” You love them all, and
you treat them all with the same adoration.

Before we get into
some of the individual songs on the record, it’s such an interesting way that
this band came together, and you said before that you didn’t really know the
other guys that well. When they first approached you with this idea, what did
you think of it?

JSS: Well, it was
the label that came to me with it. I’ve had a long-standing relationship with
Frontiers Records pretty much since they started. I’ve been with them since
2001, and they came to me with the idea of just having these two guys from two different
bands in Sweden co-write some songs and that I would end up singing on them. At
first, I was like, “Okay, I’m a bit busy. I don’t know if I’m interested. Let
me hear the songs first.” As I started listening to the stuff they were coming
up with, I got really, really excited about it. It wasn’t just a studio project
for me. I knew it would be something that could be or would be accepted by my
fans, but also it’s still a touchy situation when you’re doing something that’s
considered a project per se, because a lot of people that end up liking these
kinds of things, they realize you’ll never tour, you’ll never follow up, so
they don’t get behind them. And so just the idea of doing yet another project
that would just be a one-off, that was really the only reservation I had about
it. I had known Eric from years past through association s with Marcel and
other Swedes. I had seen Eric play before, and I met him a few times, but I
didn’t know him in a working environment. And Robert, from Work of Art, I had
no idea who this guy was. I hadn’t even listened to his band at that point. So,
it was all so new and fresh to me, without any idea of what it was going to be
like, but I really liked the songs and with that, it flourished because I got
to know these guys especially once we got together to do the videos and the EPK
for the album. I got to really know the guys behind the music, and with that,
we realized that we’re on to something here. And the fact that Frontiers wanted
to do a second album, that’s when we realized if we’re going to do it, let’s do
it as a band would do it. Let’s do it, let’s take our time and do it the right
way, as opposed to, “You write the songs, you send me the melody, you send me
the lyrics, I knock them out and I send them to you” – this is the way a lot of
people are doing things today, and I wanted to actually be more involved on
this new album, which I am. I’m co-writing a lot of songs on this new one with
them.

It must be
interesting to come into a band without any real preconceived notions of what
everybody does. Was that a different experience for you?

JSS: Well, yeah,
and I just put a lot of trust in my label. They had an idea of what they wanted
out of this. They oversaw every aspect of it, the first album, regarding the
songs, the song selections, the direction they wanted it, and they trusted in
me as well. They didn’t come back to me and say, “Could you do this
differently?” Or, “Could you change that?” They gave a thousand percent trust
in me that I knew what to do with this kind of music and what I would actually
be laying down to complete it. And so that first album, there was a magic
behind it, because there wasn’t any interference from the label, aside from
them choosing the songs with Eric and Robert in the initial stages of it. This
time around, they completely left us alone, and we chose the direction, kind of
the mapping out of where we were going to go with the new album. And with that,
they know … especially because Eric’s been writing a lot of stuff for a lot of
their other artists, like Jimi Jamison; he did an album with Bobby Kimball
(Toto) and Jimi Jamison (Survivor), he’s a few things with Frontiers that he’s
writing a lot of stuff for them that they’ve got this trust between all of us,
knowing what we’re going to deliver working together as well as individually.

I wanted to ask you
about if you remember how some of the songs came about in the studio or the
writing process for this record, starting with “Walk Away.”

JSS: “Walk Away”
was one of the newer ones. That was one of the ones that came about at the end
when we realized we needed something more like that. There were three recent
ones … actually, “Rise Up,” we didn’t even have the title of the album. We were
just calling it W.E.T. II. And “Rise
Up” was also a new one that came about in September, as well as “Walk Away” and
“The Moment.” Those three songs were last-minute additions, and we’re just
happy they came about because it just happened that Eric was writing, and he
said, “Man, I got this new song. I know we’re pretty much happy with the
direction we’re going in and what we have, but we’ve got to check these out.”
And when he sent me these three, I knew immediately the album would be more
complete if we had these three on there. So “Walk Away” was one of those that
we … ironically enough, we kind of emulated “Separate Ways” from Journey on
this one. It’s got that vibe to it, and I really think the label fell in love
so much with it that they wanted to open the album with it.

I know this doesn’t
run through the whole album, but in listening to “The Moment,” in the choruses,
it reminds me of Def Leppard, especially in the vocals.

JSS: Oh, okay.

Did you take anything
from them?

JSS: No, but I
can hear where you’re using that analogy.

Just with those big
pop choruses, just very strong.

JSS: That’s just
how we write. We just have this idea of writing really hooky kinds of choruses
and just trying to make the songs as strong as we possibly can. A lot of songs
are based on riffs. A lot of songs are based on how great the band is. We
wanted the actual songs to stand out more than how well somebody can sing or
how well somebody can play guitar.

One of the tracks
that really stands out to me and that I think is a really great closer is “Still
Unbroken.” How did that one come about?

JSS: Um, that one
went through different stages along the writing. I have earlier versions of it
that … the intros and certain parts of it sound completely different. It had a
bunch of different trial-and-errors before we decided how it was going to
sound, how it was going to end up sounding the way we have it now. But “Still
Unbroken” was probably in the earlier stages, the very beginning stages, where
we knew we wanted to have as many rock songs to choose from as opposed to just
the melodic stuff. The melodic stuff, we can churn that stuff out a lot easier
in the sense of that’s where we all come from. We all come from that school and
that world of hard rock music, but we also didn’t have heavier rockers on the first
album that we were extremely happy with. I think “Invincible” was the only one
on the first album that I felt stood out, and I wanted to make sure we had
enough rockers on this, so “Still Unbroken” went through those stages of “let’s
make this one more hard rock sounding.”

And how about “Learn
to Live Again.” That song just has great hooks.

JSS: Yeah, and
that’s another one where Eric and I discussed doing a duet for this album,
because Eric, of course, is the lead singer of the band Eclipse. And he’s got a
great voice. He’s singing all the background vocals on the album, and he comes
up with a lot of the layering and a lot of the parts … I submitted a few ideas,
but for the most part, when he’s writing, all these things are swimming in his
head as he’s writing the songs. But I wanted to take it to the next step
further, especially if we decided to play live. I want to utilize Eric as a
lead singer, and not just as a background singer, and I said, “We should do
something where …” And we tried a couple things and “Learned to Live Again”
seemed to work the best as far as him start off the first line, and then I kick
in and then we sing harmonies for the next couple lines. And it just made the
most sense, as opposed to doing a duet where we sing entire verses and kind of
switch off where a duet would be. We kind of treated it more like the way Styx
used to do it back in the day, where one would sing a line and then another one
would sing a line and then they’d sing harmony together. And that’s kind of
cool.

There’s so much
ground to hit on with your career, it’s been so varied. But I wanted to ask you
about the summer of 2012 tour with Queen Extravaganza. How did you become
involved in that and what kind of impact did Freddie Mercury have on you as a
singer?

JSS: Well,
Freddie, he was more than just a singer for me. Every aspect of being a
performer I got from Freddie Mercury. He was the mentor, so to speak, of … the
king who can actually make someone in the back of a stadium filled with 70,000
or 80,000 people feel like they’re part of the show, as well as the people in
the front row. And that’s a hard thing to do. That’s an important lesson to be
able to acquire as a student of live performance. So aside from all the things
I was inspired from and influenced by as an actual singer, writer and such, it
was even his stage persona that was such a massive influence. And to this day
when people give me kudos on my stage performance, I owe it all to somebody
like Freddie Mercury, who was basically my teacher. I watched how he was able
to entertain everybody and not just the people in the first few rows. I’ve been
involved with Brian May and Roger Taylor for many, many years and I was with
them in the initial talks when they were talking about putting this thing
together, and I told them immediately if I can’t be singing with you … and I
said it in kind of a joking way, that if I can’t be singing with you guys, I’d
love to be a part of this thing, if and when you put it together. And so, of
course, they held me to my word and when they pieced it together finally, they
did the auditions through the Internet, and that’s the way they did it, but
they reserved a spot for me when it was actually all said and done. And it was
a great privilege to be a part of it, and it was a lot of fun. It’s great to
sing those great songs, and now they’re actually moving on and they’re pursuing
it in a different realm now. And I’ve gone back to doing what I’ve got to do,
because I’m just swamped. Between doing that and TSO, and W.E.T. and my solo
thing … there’s a lot going on right now.

You really do. I was
going to ask you about Damage Control,
too, and you’re going on tour for it [in 2013] I believe.

JSS: Yeah, we’re
finally hitting Europe in April … April and May. And I eventually hope to get
to the U.S. There’s also so much going on in the summertime. There’s a
possibility I may be doing some more stuff in the studio and possibly live with
[Trans-Siberian Orchestra] next year – not just the winter thing, but some
additional things as well, and there’s talk about a possible Talisman reunion
in the summertime as well. So between my solo thing and now the W.E.T. album
coming out, and now people are going to want W.E.T. live, it’s pretty much a
full plate. The plate is running over.

Talking about Queen
again, what songs did you sing on the Queen Extravaganza and what was it like
to sing Freddie Mercury’s stuff? Was it easy for you? Did you find anything
difficult about it?

JSS: It’s
extremely easy for me, because it’s embedded in my brain. I know those lyrics
and those songs better than I know my own, strangely enough. I was pretty much
the rocker representative of the group, because they’ve got a guy named Marc
Martel, who is quite … if you know Queen Extravaganza, you know who this guy
is. And he’s very good at all aspects of Queen, but they also knew they might
need an edgier [singer] to come up with the stuff like “Stone Cold Crazy” and
“Tie Your Mother Down,” “Fat Bottomed Girls.” So that was my role in there. I
was more of the hard rocker representation of Queen’s music and the others who
were singing lead, they were utilized for what their strengths were. And I was
fine with that, because I wouldn’t want to have to try to sing these more
obscure songs or one of these novelty songs after somebody like Marc Martel,
who does them so well and does them like Freddie. If I did it, it would sound
like me doing it, but when I do the rock end of things, it fits. It doesn’t
have to sound like Freddie. It doesn’t have to sound like a Queen kind of a
take on things. It’s me doing it, but it still represents the song in the
proper way.

Do you have a
favorite Queen album?

JSS: Oh, that’s
always been a tough one to answer, and I’ve done it in many an interview. I go
with the obvious when I answer that. I usually choose A Night at the Opera, just because it’s one of the albums that …
well, I mean most of their albums I can listen to from top to bottom. I don’t
find any filler, but I have to go with one of the more obscure ones. I have to
go with Sheer Heart Attack as my
favorite.

I want to take you
back to the beginning of your career. How did you become involved with Yngwie
Malmsteen and what do you remember about meeting him for the first time?

JSS: I’ll give
you the abridged version. Basically, he left Alcatrazz in 1984. I just happened
to be at a friend’s house when the news came out on “MTV News” that he was
looking for a singer. And literally, I just sent the cassette in, and –
Cinderella-story luck later – I got the call to go meet him. It was a strange
meeting and a strange situation to be a part of, but it took three weeks of
singing with him at his house and demoing up things until I was finally
inducted as the permanent singer of the band. And even the first two songs –
the only songs that had vocals on them on the first album, the debut, Rising Force album – I didn’t know the
songs until he put me in the studio. I basically learned them as I was singing
them, and he kind of gave me the, “Well, if you sound good on them, then I’ll
keep you on them. Otherwise, I’m going to sing on them.” And so I literally had
the time I was singing on them to learn them and get a good performance in, and
he actually really liked it. Strangely enough, I was 18 years old. I had no
idea what I was doing at the time, and I pulled it off.

What’s it like to
work with such a virtuoso guitarist as a singer? Was it a matter of you not
wanting to step on any toes?

JSS: Well, yeah,
and tongue in cheek, I usually answer that the same way. I didn’t really work
with him; I worked for him. There were a few times where he kind of let me do
my own thing when it was time for it, and we were collaborating and co-writing
songs together, but he always had final say. He had a vision of what he wanted,
and if it strayed too far from that vision, then he would cut it. It was a
great situation for me as far as cutting my teeth in the business, but it also
was a frustrating one, which led me to not sing with him too long because I was
too strong-headed over where I wanted to go and I knew I wasn’t going to get
that singing with him too long.

I know we don’t have
too much time left, but you mentioned the Talisman reunion. It must have been
so tough to get Talisman going because of all the label stuff. Do you feel as
if you have unfinished business with Talisman?

JSS: Yes and no.
I understand what bands go through, bands like Queen and bands like Journey,
what they have to go through to have to replace somebody who is such a key
figure in the band to continue. Now, we didn’t have the success that those two
bands had. We didn’t have the interest and the sales of those bands, so of
course, those bands to continue they have to find the right people. They have
to be the right decision to move on. I don’t feel personally that there’s a
reason to continue Talisman without Marcel [Jacob]. I wouldn’t want to record
new albums and go on tour with Talisman without him, because I felt the same
way those bands feel, that the body work was there because of that nucleus. And
without that, it’s just kind of bastardizing the situation. Now, we do have
surviving members of the band. We do have a body of work that deserves to be
heard, and that’s what I’m more interested in. I’d rather reunite with the guys
and play some shows and celebrate what we created, as opposed to just continue
and try to come up with something that sounds like a continuation of what we
already did.

Well, you talked
about learning so much from Freddie about stage presence and singing to a live
audience. How does that carry over to your work with Trans-Siberian Orchestra?

JSS: Well, TSO is
a whole different animal. I mean, of course I still utilize my own persona and
what I have to offer as an artist, but there’s more theatrics in the sense of …
like musical theater behind Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which I never was into, I
never followed, even while loving bands like Queen and Styx, who were very musical-theater-sounding
rock bands, they didn’t sound like that to me. To me, they didn’t sound like a
cast from “Les Miserables” or “Chicago” or one of those musical-theater
numbers. With TSO, I have to kind of engulf myself into that world. I have to
learn a little bit about it, because it is about going into characters. It’s
not just about singing the songs. I can take any one of those songs and just
sing circles around them, but it’s not about the performance of the songs as a
vocalist. It’s more about the performance of the songs as a character. There
are two different worlds there that I had to learn, and I look at it as an
extension to who I am and learn something new and challenge myself into doing
something that I’d never done before. That’s one of the reasons why TSO has
become such an important part of my life, because I am now learning something
different that I never had in my life. And I’m now able to now maybe, possibly
utilize it to do something on my own.

Doing the vocals for
the movie “Rock Star,” did that prepare you in any way for Trans-Siberian
Orchestra?

JSS: Not at all.
I went in there and sang the way Jeff Scott Soto would be singing in Steel
Dragon.

Looking back on the
experience now, was it something you enjoyed?

JSS: Absolutely,
a thousand percent. I had so much fun with that. I’m longtime friends with Zakk
[Wylde, of Black Label Society and Ozzy Osbourne] and [ex-Dokken bassist] Jeff
Pilson. Just to be a part of that whole experience with those guys, it felt
like even though it was a fictitious band, it felt like we were a real band for
the time we were in the studio putting that stuff together.

What do you think of
the movie now?

JSS: I still love
it. I loved it then. I thought it was tongue-in-cheek and there were parts of
it that were, eh? And there were a lot of parts I really liked, and I think it
still holds up. If we didn’t have the tragedy of 9/11, that occurred literally
days after the release of the movie, I think it would have had a better chance.

Talking about tragedy
and the new album, from a lot of uplifting and hopeful songs, with the tragedy
that happened in Newtown, Conn. it seems like a perfect time for this kind of a
record.

JSS: Anytime
there’s positivity out there … I mean, there’s enough negativity in the world that
we have to deal with, and we’re going to be dealing with it, it’s just the
world we live in today. So I think it’s good to have some positivity when we
can get it, just because we need it at this point in time.

The fiends are getting restless, as ominous thunderstorm
sound effects rumble in the distance, signaling in a not-so-subtle way that
evil, in the form of horror-punks the Misfits, this way comes.

Led by founding
member Jerry Only and his “devil’s lock,” with Dez Cadena on guitar and Eric “Chupacabra”
Arce on drums, the Misfits – Glenn Danzig nowhere to be found, having split
from the band in the mid-1980s amid much legal wrangling – crawl and slither
out onstage to regale hardcore hooting and whistling followers with B-movie-inspired tales of monsters, murderers and other things that go bump in
the night.

Only it’s almost impossible to discern just what’s happening
in a good chuck of their latest concert album Dead Alive because Only’s bass is turned up to ludicrously loud
levels, overloading the Misfits’ circuits and creating these formless, muddled sonic
black holes that practically swallow whatever malevolent chords and notes are supposed
to be hemorrhaging from their amps. Dead
Alive culls spirited performances from the Misfits’ Halloween night 2011
show at B.B. King’s in Times Square in New York City and their Oct. 30, 2011
gig at the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, N.J., and their brutality has never
been more delightfully injurious, from their punishing rhythmic mayhem to Only’s strong, broad-shouldered vocals. But the egregious sound problems muffles their roar, obscuring Cadena’s guitar
work, dulling the hooks of “Death Ray,” mucking up an otherwise rambunctious “Shining”
and reducing the song structure of a riotous, fast-paced “American Psycho” to complete
and utter ruin.

Okay, punk is messy. It’s not meant to be well-scrubbed and
clean-sounding, and the Misfits play with the kind of raw, reckless abandon, violence
and frenzied energy hoped for from these old, intractable punks on an explosive
version of “Vivid Red” and the brawling, bludgeoning opener “The Devil’s Rain,”
from the 2011 album of the same name. Threatening to go thermonuclear the rest
of the way, Only counts off “1, 2, 3” as the Misfits launch into a blistering “Land
of the Dead,” but it’s here where the mix starts to go awry, the virus
spreading to straight-line revivals of “Curse of the Mummy’s Hand” and “Cold in
Hell” – continuing, by the way, a run of seven straight songs off The Devil’s Rain – where Arce’s straightforward
drum bashing gets completely out of hand and loses all sense of timing. It’s
like he’s hitting his cymbals with a lead pipe, which would be punk as hell
were it not for Dead Alive’s obvious
faults.

Opinions vary wildly as to the merits of the The Devil’s Rain LP, the Misfits’ first
studio album in ages. Many who pine for Danzig’s return have, for the most part,
written off this incarnation of the band, while the Only backers seem generally
pleased, if not overly excited, about it. There is reason for optimism, though,
as the Misfits close Dead Alive in celebratory
fashion, gaining a tighter rein on a hook-laden, riff-mongering “Helena” that
hits hard and explodes, before the bruising, greaser ‘50s
rock ‘n’ roll nostalgia of “Science Fiction/Double Feature” and “Saturday
Night” lights up the night.

The world needs the Misfits and their ghoulish fun, and Only deserves kudos not
only for his improved singing, but also for keeping the band going, even if
some aren’t entirely sure of their direction. (misfitsrecords.com)

Whitesnake knows how to make a visual impact. Having Tawny
Kitaen suggestively writhe all over David Coverdale’s car in those famous Whitesnake
videos of the 1980s was a stroke of genius. Sex sells, and Coverdale and company rode those steamy MTV scenes all the way to the bank, where they made large - and I mean, large - deposits.

Unfortunately, she won’t be making an appearance in the new
Whitesnake DVD/live CD package “Made in Japan” that’s due out April 23,
courtesy of Frontiers Records, but Coverdale and company will be performing some
of the strongest material of their career.

Available in several formats, including a deluxe 2 CD/DVD
edition, Blu-ray and a standalone DVD, “Made in Japan” culls concert footage –
shot in HD in 5.1 and stereo – from Whitesnake’s co-headlining set at the “Loud
Park” Festival on Oct. 11, 2011 at Saitama Super Arena in Japan. At the time,
Whitesnake was barnstorming the earth during their “Forevermore World Tour.”

Initially, the set was recorded solely for Japanese TV and
future “Loud Park” promotions. However, after three songs were broadcasted on a
“Loud Park” highlights program in Japan, there was a multitude of calls for
Whitesnake to release the entire performance for the general public.

“Made in Japan” features a mix of tracks from Whitesnake’s
most recent studio album, Forevermore,
along with classics like “Is This Love,” “Still of the Night” and “Here I Go
Again.” There is also a bonus CD with never-before-heard outtakes and acoustic
versions of material from Forevermore
recorded during soundchecks on the 2011 Japanese tour. Additional DVD content
includes various band photo slideshows and fan-shot videos. For more information,
visit www.whitesnake.com or www.frontiers.it.

The inner sanctum of Sound City never appeared in Better Homes & Gardens. Interiors
with walls covered in brown shag carpeting and beat-up furniture that even a
college fraternity would leave out on the curb would certainly offend the
delicate sensibilities of its readership. From the outside, the place looked
like a dump. Inside, it was even worse. But if you were a musician stepping
into the studio for the first time, those record awards hanging in the hallways
certainly made you overlook the shabby accommodations.

Such was the case for Dave Grohl, who made the trip down to
Los Angeles in the early ‘90s with his Nirvana band mates, Kurt Cobain and
Krist Novaselic, to bring their vision for Nevermind
to life in the same studio where Fleetwood Mac had recorded Rumours. Understandably, Grohl has a soft spot in his
heart for Sound City, and so do the numerous artists who did some of their best
work there. It’s gone now, but not forgotten, having closed as a commercial
studio in May 2011, and Grohl is making sure everybody understands what a
special place it was with his wonderfully nostalgic tribute “Sound City.”

In his directorial debut, Grohl, in his own inimitably casual and yet excitable manner, does the next-to-impossible,
making a dirty, run-down recording studio that had never seen better days seem
magical. And it was. How else do you explain the existence of a room that
produced absolutely perfect drum sound, even though it had none of the characteristics
that drummers want in such a facility? In fact, by all rights, it should have
yielded terrible drum tracks, as the producers, engineers and drummers
interviewed by Grohl are only too happy to tell you. And then there’s that
custom-made Neve 8028 board, the one Grohl saved when Sound City went under for
good. There were only four like it in the world, and the care that went into
building one helped sound men become studio legends – like Butch Vig, who
produced Nevermind.

Even going so far as to interview the maker of that very board,
Grohl – playfully playing dumb while listening to Rupert Neve explain in great
detail how it works – practically creates another character for his movie with
that console, its wires and buttons having played such a huge role in
committing some of the greatest studio performances in rock history to tape. If
only that board could talk. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Metallica, Rage
Against the Machine, Fear, Dio, Barry Manilow, Rick Springfield, Neil Young – all of
them made records at Sound City, and in the right hands, that Neve board did
God’s work. In the end, Grohl rescues it and puts it back to work, as he and
the rest of the Foo Fighters record tracks with a number of artists, including
Paul McCartney and Springfield, who as it so happens, provides the most
poignant moment of the film.

While most the movie is a parade of warm memories and funny
anecdotes – Fear’s Lee Ving providing some of the comic relief, while others
talk glowingly about recording albums the old way – there’s a clearly emotional
Springfield, openly expressing regret over treating Sound City owner Joe
Gottfried, a man who’d dealt with him as if he were his own son, badly after he’d
made it big. Gottfried’s kindness is remembered by many in the movie, as are
the risks he and fellow owner Tom Skeeter took while running the studio and
waiting for that big break that would rescue it from certain ruin.

As much as “Sound City” is a lively and enthusiastic study
of the creative process and a not-too geeky exploration of music’s “digital vs.
analog” debate, it’s also sheds light on the invaluable contributions of those
behind the scenes who gave Sound City its family atmosphere. And that’s the
charm of “Sound City,” an unstructured, freewheeling film that’s more of an Irish
wake than a somber eulogy, where Grohl interviews practically everybody who
ever set foot in Sound City and they all toast its shambolic charms with
unguarded commentary, speaking of it as they would a long-lost friend. And
Grohl’s preternatural skill as a filmmaker – who knew he had it in him? – shines
through, as he collects all the engaging elements of this tale and pieces them
together, somewhat chronologically, in a way that makes sense, even though perhaps
it shouldn’t. Just like the best rock ‘n’ roll.

He’s a wizard. He’s a true star, and he’s hitting retirement
age, but that doesn’t mean Todd Rundgren has tired of creating pop-rock magic. His
new studio album, State, will hit the
streets on April 9.

State is Rundgren’s
24th solo album, and this danceable blend of rock, soul, R&B and
electronica will be released on the Esoteric Antenna label via Cherry Red. In
support of State, Rundgren, who
celebrates his 65th birthday in 2013, will embark on an 11-city U.S.
tour in May.

In the late ‘60s, Rundgren fronted the psychedelic-pop outfit
The Nazz, before leaving in 1969 to go solo and record his debut LP Runt. However, it was 1972’s Something/Anything? that established
Rundgren as a sublime talent both as a songwriter and a studio artist, having
played every instrument and singing every vocal part on the record, as well as
serving as producer. He would go to make other landmark albums such as Todd, The Hermit of Mink Hollow and A
Wizard A True Star.

Returning to the group format, Rundgren formed the progressive-rock
visionaries Utopia in 1974, recording nine albums with the band. Expanding his
horizons, Rundgren also made a name for himself as a producer, twiddling the
knobs for classic records by the likes of Patti Smith, The New York Dolls,
Cheap Trick, XTC, the Psychedelic Furs and Hall and Oates, although it was Meat
Loaf’s mega-hit Bat Out of Hell that
cemented his reputation as a studio wunderkind.

In addition, Rundgren composed all the music and lyrics for
Joe Papp’s 1989 Off-Broadway production of Joe Orton’s “Up Against It” – the screenplay
of which was commissioned by The Beatles for what was to be their third movie.
He’s also scored such movies and TV shows as “Dumb and Dumber” and “Pee Wee’s
Playhouse,” respectively.

It figures to be a busy year for Rundgren, who will hold his
annual musical summer camp, known as Toddstock v6.5, June 17-22 near New
Orleans.

Claudio Bergamin sure has a way with apocalyptic imagery.
His cover art for Tales of the Weird,
the first new album in three years from Germanic thrash/power metal mavens
Paradox, is certainly eye-catching, what with the creepy cloaked figures
wandering about a wintry, burned-out landscape surveying the destruction as
broken pieces of what may be a meteor fall from the sky on what has to be an
alien planet.

Were this the 1980s, that sort of scene on a vinyl sleeve
would have geeky teenage metal fans that had nothing better to do during the
day but hang around record stores frothing at the mouth. This being the digital
age, Bergamin’s imaginative, sci-fi/horror vision simply won’t have the impact
on sales it would in the dwindling brick-and-mortar universe, but it does
accomplish something for Paradox. And that is, it rectifies the cardinal sin of
sequencing Paradox commits by opening the record with the 9:19 title track, an
unwieldy, power-sapping mish-mash of conflicting and unfulfilled ideas that
quickly unravel and fail to gain any real traction – despite some serious guitar shredding and the occasional attention-grabbing riff from Charly
Steinhauer and Christian Munzer.

Hardy and fair-minded listeners who’ve crawled through that
obstacle course of barely listenable challenges are rewarded with action-packed, dizzying
progressive-metal mazes of dramatic arrangements, blinding tempos, pristine
production and spectacular melodies. Among the most gripping and frantic tracks
are “Escalation,” the multi-layered “Brainwashed,” “The Downward Spiral and “Slashdead”
– all of them synthesizing Dream Theater and Metallica in combining fluid, fleet-fingered fretwork, flights of classical bombast
and pounding, frenzied rhythms as unstoppable as a runaway train. Heavier than
most of Tales of the Weird, but still
fast as can be, “Brutalized” is Paradox on steroids, yet floating over this
riotous, skull-crushing mayhem going on at street level is this strangely
beautiful little guitar melody that somehow avoids being sucked into the tumult.
Look for it and don’t miss it, make sure to stop and appreciate the pretty,
well-designed acoustic guitar interlude “Zeitgeist” – they could get lost
in all the brazen firepower Paradox unloads on Tales of the Weird.

Still, it all comes together for Paradox on the expansive
and melodic “Fragile Alliance,” a raging river of monstrous, thick riffage, power-metal
theatrics and vast, canyon-like vocal choruses. And yet for all of its extraordinary
technical brilliance, its racing blend of power and speed, and its sheer
immensity, Tales of the Weird suffers
somewhat from ... well, a paradox. Trying to balance the desire to thrash like there’s no tomorrow with a flair for the dramatic is tricky for Paradox, especially with a singer whose strength is dynamic expression rather than brute force. Furthermore, the listener fatigue that comes with being bombarded
every possible moment with instrumental fireworks is a very real problem. Paradox
has the best of intentions with their cover of Rainbow’s “A Light in the Black,”
but it’s too much, with whirls of synthesizer competing against a sensory overload of their own creation. And yet “Tales of the Weird” is a real page-turner once you get past the first chapter. (www.afm-records.de)